Rebellion: Tainted Realm: Book 2 Read online

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Hachette Digital

  978-0-7481-3416-8

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Ian Irvine

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Excerpt from Ice Forged by Gail Z. Martin

  Copyright © 2013 by Gail Z. Martin

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  HACHETTE DIGITAL

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Rebellion

  Table of Contents

  By Ian Irvine

  COPYRIGHT

  List of Characters

  Précis of Vengeance

  PART ONE: HEALING BLOOD

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  PART TWO: OPAL ARMOUR

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  PART THREE: BLOOD OATH

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  CHAPTER 87

  CHAPTER 88

  CHAPTER 89

  CHAPTER 90

  CHAPTER 91

  CHAPTER 92

  CHAPTER 93

  CHAPTER 94

  CHAPTER 95

  CHAPTER 96

  CHAPTER 97

  CHAPTER 98

  CHAPTER 99

  CHAPTER 100

  CHAPTER 101

  CHAPTER 102

  CHAPTER 103

  CHAPTER 104

  CHAPTER 105

  CHAPTER 106

  CHAPTER 107

  CHAPTER 108

  CHAPTER 109

  CHAPTER 110

  CHAPTER 111

  CHAPTER 112

  CHAPTER 113

  GLOSSARY

  extras

  about the author

  if you enjoyed

  CHAPTER 112

  CHAPTER 113

  GLOSSARY

  extras

  about the author

  if you enjoyed

  BY IAN IRVINE

  The Three Worlds Series

  The View from the Mirror Quartet

  A Shadow on the Glass

  The Tower on the Rift

  Dark is the Moon

  The Way Between the Worlds

  The Well of Echoes Quartet

  Geomancer

  Tetrarch

  Alchymist

  Chimaera

  Song of the Tears Trilogy

  The Fate of the Fallen

  The Curse on the Chosen

  The Destiny of the Dead

  The Tainted Realm

  Vengeance

  Rebellion

  The red eyes blinked but the pack did not move. Rix took another step. Only eight more to the door. He could hear Glynnie’s heavy breathing behind him.

  “It’s all right, Benn,” she whispered. “Rix’ll save us.”

  The tone of her voice wasn’t convincing. He lowered the torch, holding it out in front of him at the chest level of the shifters. Another step.

  “To get to me, you’ve got to pass the fire,” said Rix, swinging it back and forth.

  The pack leader’s eyes followed the flame. It double-blinked.

  Now! Rix leapt forwards, thrusting out the burning torch with his right hand and Maloch with his left. Up one step, two, three and still the shifter had not budged. If he had misjudged, the children would die. Four, five, six. He let out a furious battle cry and swung Maloch at the beast’s snout.

  LIST OF CHARACTERS

  Arkyz Leatherhead: A gigantic, murderous bandit.

  Astatin: A witch-woman and healer in Garramide.

  Benn: Glynnie’s little brother, aged ten.

  Blathy: Leatherhead’s mistress – a bold, vengeful gambler.

  Chancellor, the: The leader of Hightspall, a small, twisted, cunning man.

  Crebb: A black-bearded thug.

  Dibly, Madam: An aged healer.

  Errek First-King: The legendary inventor of king-magery, recreated in spirit form by Lyf.

  Gauntling, the: A humanoid, winged shifter.

  Glynnie: A young maidservant from Palace Ricinus, Benn’s big sister.

  Grandys, Axil: A brutal, treacherous man, the first of the Five Heroes and the legendary founder of Hightspall.

  Holm: An old, mysterious man, very clever with his hands. Also known as Kroni.

  Lirriam: One of the Five Heroes, a cold, buxom temptress.

  Lizue: A beautiful prisoner in Fortress Rutherin.

  Lyf, King Lyf: The last king of Cythe, recently reincarnated from his ghostly wrythen, and now the king of the Cythonians.

  Maloch: Rix’s enchanted sword, which originally belonged to Axil Grandys.

  Nuddell: One of Leatherhead’s gang, later Rix’s loyal sergeant.

  Porfry: The Keeper of the Records at Garramide; a fanatical Herovian.

  Radl: A tall, beautiful Pale slave in Cython. Tali’s enemy since childhood.

  Rannilt: A slave girl, aged ten, who has an enigmatic gift for magery. She escaped from Cython with Tali.

  Rezire: The curator at Tirnan Twil.

&nb
sp; Rixium (Rix): Formerly heir to the vast estates of House Ricinus. Also known as Deadhand.

  Rochlis: Lyf’s greatest general. A man with a conscience.

  Rufuss: One of the Five Heroes, a tall, gaunt man whose only pleasure is denial.

  Sullen Man, the: A cold-eyed prisoner in Fortress Rutherin.

  Swelt: The castellan of Garramide, a greedy, corpulent man.

  Syrten: One of the Five Heroes, a massive, golem-like man.

  Tali: A Pale slave, the first to ever escape from Cython.

  Tobry: Rix’s closest friend, who became a caitsthe to save his friends.

  Wil: A blind Cythonian, addicted to sniffing alkoyl. Also known as Mad Wil, Wil the Sump.

  Yestin: A local lord who helps Rix in the raid on Jadgery.

  Yulia: One of the Five Heroes, a slender, sad-eyed, moral woman.

  PRÉCIS OF VENGEANCE

  In the underground city of Cython, a simple youth called WIL reads the forbidden but incomplete iron book, The Consolation of Vengeance. It burns his eyes out, but he also has a foreseeing about the one, a slave girl of the Pale who will grow up to challenge the Cythonians’ legendary leader, King LYF. Wil should have told the matriarchs where to find the one, so they could have her killed, but he lies, and other girls are killed in her place.

  Lyf, the creator of the iron book, was murdered two thousand years ago but still exists as a bodiless wrythen bent on two things: restoring his dispossessed people to the land above, and taking revenge on the Hightspallers who killed him and drove his people out.

  TALI, an eight-year-old slave girl in Cython, is led, along with her mother IUSIA, on a secret escape route by TINYHEAD, a Cythonian. But Tinyhead betrays them, and in a gloomy cellar Iusia is caught by a masked man and woman. Though Tali has a gift for magery, she is unable to summon it in her mother’s defence – using magery in Cython means instant death and she has been taught to suppress it.

  While the terrified child watches from hiding, Iusia’s captors hack something out of her head, killing her, then take her blood. After they have gone, Tali sees a richly dressed boy hiding on the other side of the cellar. He flees and she returns to her slave’s existence, swearing to bring the killers to justice when she grows up.

  In a cavern deep in the mountains, Lyf’s wrythen is trying to bring his two-thousand-year-old plan to completion. To do so he has to recover his king-magery, the mighty healing force that was lost when he was murdered by the legendary Five Heroes at the behest of their leader, AXIL GRANDYS. But first, Lyf needs all five ebony pearls, powerful magical artefacts that only form in the heads of rare, female Pale slaves.

  Lacking a body, Lyf cannot take the pearls himself, and long ago he forced the sorcerer DEROE to get each new pearl for him, possessing Deroe to make sure he complied. To escape the agony of possession, Deroe employed LORD and LADY RICINUS to take the second, third and fourth pearls for him, hoping thereby to drive Lyf out and kill him. For this service, Deroe made House Ricinus fabulously wealthy.

  Now Lyf forms a long-term plan to get the fifth pearl – the master pearl – by compelling the Ricinus’s son and heir, RIXIUM (RIX), via the great heatstone in Rix’s room, to take the master pearl once the host slave girl comes of age.

  Tali turns eighteen, discovers that three more of her direct female ancestors were also murdered at a young age, and knows that the killers will soon be hunting her. She has to escape Cython but does not know how – the Pale have been enslaved for a thousand years and in that time none have ever escaped. At the same time she begins to have terrible headaches, as though something is grinding against the inside of her skull. The master pearl is waking (though she does not know they exist).

  The pain accentuates Tali’s rebellious streak, but her attack on a vicious guard results in the execution of her only friend, MIA, by their overseer, BANJ. Stricken with guilt, Tali swears that one day she will save her enslaved people. Then she realises that Tinyhead is hunting her.

  Tali also discovers that the Cythonians, who are masters of alchymie and have invented many alchymical weapons, are preparing to go to war on Hightspall, the land above, where Tali’s ancestors came from. Tali feels sure that Hightspall is unprepared; she has to warn her country.

  With the aid of a ten-year-old slave girl, RANNILT, who has an unfathomable gift for magery, and MIMOY, a foul-mouthed old woman who turns out to be Tali’s ancestor, she escapes, beating Tinyhead and killing Banj with an uncontrollable burst of magery. For that crime, if the Cythonians catch her, she will suffer the most terrible death they can devise. Mimoy dies, but Tali and Rannilt get away and Tali sets off across Hightspall to try and find clues to the killers’ identities.

  In Palace Ricinus, Rix is about to come of age. Soon he will inherit one of the greatest fortunes in Hightspall. He’s a trained warrior as well as a gifted artist, though some of his paintings are disturbingly divinatory. But Rix is troubled by nightmares about doom and destruction, the fall of his house, and his role in a future, terrible murder. He is supposed to be completing his father’s portrait for Lord Ricinus’s Honouring, which Rix’s social-climbing mother, Lady Ricinus, plans to use to raise House Ricinus to the First Circle, the highest families of all.

  Rix can’t bear the hypocrisy, for his father is a disgusting drunk and his mother a cold, merciless woman without a good word for anyone. The Honouring will be a travesty and he has to get away. With his reckless and impoverished friend TOBRY, Rix goes off to the mountains, hunting, in the middle of the night. He takes MALOCH, a battered old sword that bears a protective enchantment, though on the way Maloch seems to be leading him.

  Rix and Tobry are attacked by a caitsthe, a huge shifter cat, and only a brilliant attack by Rix drives the injured beast off. They pursue it into a deep cavern, but are forced to flee from Lyf’s malevolent wrythen. Tobry is knocked out by a rock fall; Rix, after an almighty battle, kills the caitsthe but is immediately attacked by the wrythen, which is trying to possess Tobry. On driving it off, Rix discovers that the wrythen is afraid of Maloch, which it recognises as the sword Axil Grandys used to hack Lyf’s feet off before he was murdered two thousand years ago.

  Rix carries Tobry to safety. On the way home they realise that preparations they saw in the wrythen’s caverns presage war, and head across the thermal wasteland of the Seethings to check on the Rat Hole, a shaft up to the surface used by the Cythonians.

  Rix and Tobry encounter Tali and Rannilt in the Seethings. Tobry is immediately smitten by Tali, but Rix and Tali clash and, when he recognises her as a Pale, he rides off in a fury – in Hightspall the Pale are regarded as traitors for serving the enemy. Tobry apologises and goes after him. Once they’re gone, Tali has a blinding revelation – Rix is the boy she saw in the murder cellar! He’s her best clue to the killers’ identities, and she has to go after him, though how can she ever trust him?